Reviews, discussion and news about crime fiction. Occasional forays into books in other areas, publishing, science, the web and more.

12 May 2009

Tweetfic for CrimeTwitterers

Twitter is currently very hard to avoid if you go anywhere on the internet (even though the sums have been done several times and only 40 per cent of users return for a second visit). A post at The Guardian describes a new craze, Tweetfic, which mashes up Twitter with novel plots. (Not to be confused with Debra Hamel's longstanding Twitterlit.) Some examples of Tweetfic:

Woman meets man called Darcy who seems horrible. He turns out to be nice really. They get together.

Orphan given £££ by secret follower. He thinks it's @misshavisham but it turns out to be @magwitch

Vladimir and Estragon stand next to tree and wait for Godot. Their status is not updated.

Man walks around Dublin. We follow every minute detail of his day. He's probably overtweeting.

Inevitably, upon reading this and with yesterday's discovery of an @crimefiction "person" at Twitter (who has nothing to do with NextReads, my assumption about that was due to my almost complete confusion concerning Twitter - however, I think I now have an inklingette about who he/she/it might be), made me wonder if we could do the same for crime fiction. How to summarise a book in 140 characters (max) without a spoiler? I'll have a go but I challenge readers to come up with three CrimeTwitters - and let us guess the book.

My attempts:

Interest in entomology reveals to hidden half of duo cause of ancient family curse. Misty environs.

Well done, Lauren. Yes, Nick and Nora are already married so I wrote "keeps" rather than "gets" girl - the marriage was rather freewheeling after all! But congratulations for an excellent hat -trick. Drop me an email with your mailing address and your prize will be on its way.